CARNIVALE

The word Carnivale means a Farewell to Meat. Ew that sounds like something I'd hate, I LOVE CHEESEBURGERS AND MEATSAUSE!! But no it's okay, Carnivale, to Liz and I, actually means massive dance parades! If you smashed together a scene from Moulin Rouge with a pop concert, with a renaissance festival (like actually during the ACTUAL renaissance, not one of those things for weird people), with a block party, and placed it in beautiful lagoon lands that is Carnivale...hope I described it okay. 

First we went to Venice! We decided that since we wanted to do more than chug wine in the main piazza, we would explore the islands of Burano and Murano (yeah they rhyme, just in case you were still under the misconception that Venice is a real place)

Liz, knowing how to blend in with the natives
pants-wise.

Every building is a different color and there's no streets.
This place is pretty much fictional

For the morning commute

In Burano, you're only allowed to wear clothes
in the same color palate as your house, boat

But actually...

Beautiful little ducks on the beautiful little island

At around sunset we headed back to the main island, and walked down the BUSY streets to Piazza San Marco. It was such an amazing sight. Everyone is dressed up, dancing, singing in the streets and it's busy but not in a claustrophobic way. It's like NYE in manhattan except somehow not horrible. It's like magic. On a magical island of bridges and people dressed in gowns. Yeah, I'm not sure I'll be able to remember that Venice isn't always how it is at Carnivale because it was my first time going there...that's okay, it's nice to think that magical places exist in the world.

Piazza San Marco
I don't even know what that is!!

After grabbing exploring the piazza for a little, which is honestly beyond explanation, we grabbed a pizza. Just being in the Carnivale atmosphere is incredible. They were playing 20's songs on stage that somehow blended perfectly with the top 40 dance music blasting out of the speakers in the back. Some people are dressed as Elizabethean royalty and others as superman. Wine is coming out of fountains in the Piazza. AND SOMEHOW IT ALL WORKS!!

Seized by the spirit, Liz and I followed a giant moving pair of speakers (attached to a mac, on wheels, dragged by a lady dressed as a tiger) through the beautiful streets (bridges) of Venice that we'd never even seen before. It was a giant moving dance mob, but mob is the wrong word because it's never stressful or too crowded or scary it's just GREAT. Everyone's just dressed up like Halloween but more colorful and beautiful and dancing in their own little worlds. There were tons of people on the sides cheering too and you could spend your entire life just looking at what everyone's wearing. We danced up and downstairs, over bridges, showing amazing  canal views of a city I'd never even seen before, to ridiculous music both Italian and American. It was kind of like being in another world, the world of DANCE PARADE. We had hoped the parade would loop back around into the square.

It didn't. So we were in the middle of a water palace city where I had never been before and we had to get back to the waterbus in the next 30 minutes. Whoops. Luckily we didn't fall into a lagoon or anything and followed some weird signs back to the piazza!




Day 2 Viareggio
In case I didn't already have sensory overload, we went to Viareggio. In my mind I was like floats and stuff! NO. Works of really weird art and amazing dancing people.

People dress up and do dance routines on the floats
even older people and little kids!
It's so cool, like Halloween could be if everyone was into it and it wasn't just for kids.

Giant, papier mache, great
don't know who that guy steering the bird is is...lots of political jokes I didn't get 

SOME WERE REALLY SCARY!!
He roars so loud!!

But some were pretty
I love the dancing flowers!

Making fun of the french for...being french?

Why not?

Liz joins the parade with her new friend, colorful fruit man

Families aren't this great without being really lame in america

A skunk couple watches a dinosaur.

Why was the fireman axing the dinosaurs tail?? I DON'T KNOW!!

All the music had the same beat
BUM bum BUM bum

Giant popes, can you find our president?!

Our feet were getting cold, so LUCKILY we were able to find another dance parade behind the popes where people weren't wearing costumes or doing planned dance routines so we were able to dance our way down the whole street. And once again run back to the bus as fast as we could (with a gelato stop).

Can't wait to come back and swim in the adriatic!

Even the colors on this page are hurting my eyes. I need to like shut them or look at a white wall for awhile. Such sensory overload but I never want to leave this weekend. MAGIC.